The evolution of cognitive skills during childhood across the UK

The four nations of the UK have increasingly taken separate paths on education policy since devolution in 1999 – with England focusing on increasing school autonomy, and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland abolishing league tables and external testing. Despite this, the study is one of only a few to explore how this divergence may have affected pupil performance over the last two decades. This study finds that pupils in Wales perform much closer to those in England than has been previously reported in international PISA results, where Wales trailed England significantly. Scottish pupils are shown to perform better than other UK nations at a very young age, but this quickly recedes as Scottish pupils get older, with pupils falling behind England in most performance measures, particularly in maths. Pupils in Northern Ireland lead the way among UK nations in most measures of pupil outcomes, even moving ahead of the region of London, which is often widely revered for its high level of educational attainment. The highly positive outcomes displayed by pupils in Northern Ireland through the EPI study are more positive than seen in other international comparisons.